


there's a crack in the wall

by brandflakeeee



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 18:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19045912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandflakeeee/pseuds/brandflakeeee
Summary: hades finally understands.





	there's a crack in the wall

**Author's Note:**

> filling a request from a lovely friend on tumblr! her request, and i quote:
> 
> PLEASE write about hades' thought process during epic iii and lover’s desire  
> a bitch wants emotional hades thinking about how much he loves his wife
> 
> i am happy to oblige! i haven't actually seen the show in person, so i'm going based off soundtrack/bootleg. please don't throw hands at me if i get something wrong.

Hades is an  _ idiot _ .

 

It’s the thought that strikes him first, when the poet sings. The soft strumming of that lyre that seems to echo into the deepest caverns of the underground. The melody alone sets his teeth on edge and it takes him a long time to realise it’s the song tattooed on his very bones, ingrained in the back of his mind. The melody that’s been drowned out the past decades by the constant drumming din of Hadestown. 

 

Now he can hear none of that. Only the melody, and the boy as he sings.

 

He’s never been liked by the mortals. If they don’t fear him, they curse him. It doesn’t bother him like it once used to when he was young, when they would bow at the feet of his brothers and cower in his presence. He’d learned how to use that against them all in the end. Let the power consume him until it had all but choked that melody right out of him. 

 

Like a weed choking a vibrant, beautiful carnation.

 

He doesn’t know how she does it, his wife. Despite the muted colors of the underworld she is still as vibrant as anything, standing on the other side of the poet. Hades watches her watch the poet - no, she doesn’t look at him of course. Why would she? 

 

Oh, what a fool he is.

 

Terrified to lose her, he’d built this city. He sees the world she has above and knows he cannot give it to her here. So he put the sunlight in the fires of the foundries, made permanent flowers grow out of stunning gems and jewels, provided her with everything she could ever want hre in an attempt to please her, to keep her. To ensure that there will never be a day when he goes to that train station up top and she will not be waiting for him. 

 

She’s never said she regrets their marriage, but sometimes he sees it in her eyes. The sadness.

 

Now he wonders if he’s gotten it all wrong. 

 

No, he knows he’s gotten it all wrong. 

 

The feeling twists his stomach. The melody continues, filling the air. The poet sings. No one speaks. Only listens. Hades most of all. 

 

He feels foolish he needs reminding of how much he loves Persephone.

 

Everything he’s done has been for her love, and yet - it had only driven her further away. He couldn’t understand why. Not then. Things have become more clear as of late and as the poet lays their story out in front of him, he understands. His gaze goes back to his wife and he can see her in his mind’s eye in that garden up above. That sun-kissed skin, unbound hair, clutching flowers that could not compare to the sheer beauty on her face. He hadn’t had a hope the moment they’d looked at one another. Her kiss had been sweet, laced with honey and nectar and a softness Hades had never been granted. She had not looked upon him as a monster, in fear. She’d looked upon him as a man, and her as a woman. 

 

And yes, they’d stolen away. He’d forged her a ring from his bare hands and things had been fine for those six months under the ground. Persephone had brought life to his world in which he’d never known. The underworld had been brighter with her presence that only seemed to deepen when she went away in the springs. Those six months apart were difficult enough - and as the years wore on, the doubt had come in. A thought at the back of his mind, that one day she would change her mind.

 

And so he’d built. 

 

Foundries. Factories. Mines. The wall. All of it to offer her in place of what he could not give her in sunshine and flowers and greenery during the winter months. Hadestown had grown until it was the very beating of his heart for his wife, who looked more and more crestfallen each winter. The fights had started not long after and he can’t remember the last time they’ve spoken without biting words and harsh remarks. 

 

He tries to love her, to give her everything, and it’s as if the wall he built to keep her safe and happy had been built between them instead. No amount of picking at it would wear it down, just create soft cracks here or there. Nothing large enough to get through.

 

But this song, the ancient melody that drags him out of the fog of Hadestown slips between the mini cracks in that old wall like vines, and rips open a gaping hole that allow him to see beyond for the first time in years. When he looks on the other side he sees her, his beautiful, vibrant wife. 

 

He had built Hadestown, but it was Hadestown that had destroyed him. The wall had not set him free - it had trapped him, suffocating any shred of that man who had knelt before the woman called Kore in that garden. They had not been immortal then. Just a man and a woman.

 

Oh, he’s been a fool.

 

He doesn’t know where the poet has gotten that melody, the melody he’d hummed in the garden so many thousands of years ago. It’s as if the earth has been holding onto it, waiting for the right person to give muse to that would end up here before him, to sing the song as old as time itself and remind him of what once had been. 

 

What the world could be again.

 

He hums it without thinking. The poet does too. 

 

Persephone had come to him begging to give the poet and his lover a chance. Had she heard the music, too? The melody he sings? It washes over him and wraps around him like a warm embrace, slipping through that gaping hole in his wall and into the cracks of his own foundations. 

 

He feels himself crumbling.

 

When he looks from the poet to his wife again, she’s finally looking at him. Those liquid amber eyes that he can see even from here are fixed on him, watching him. He realises he’s still singing the melody, almost instinctive. Unbidden. 

 

He stands. Unbidden. 

 

His wife, oh his beautiful wife. He doesn’t deserve her - and yet that’s his undoing, the doubt that had sown in his mind. How cruel doubt has been, fueling him like coal to a fire. Pounding in his head an unrelenting beat that had become the song of Hadestown, drowning out any trace of the ancient melody his body once sang.

 

He and Persephone are only half a foot apart and he isn’t sure how he’s here. There’s a warmth in his chest that seizes him, his palms growing warm. 

 

The carnation that blooms in his hand is nothing compared to Persephone’s vibrance, but it’s a start. He can see the unshed tears in her eyes, burning brightly as she wraps her hands in his around that flower, like it holds all the answers.

 

She wraps it delicately in her hands and tucks it in his breast pocket. Her fingers splay against his chest briefly just below, across his heart. The heart that has beat only for her since the dawn of time, the heart that sings that melody between his ribs. Vines between stone. 

 

They dance. The music sweeps between them from the poet’s playing, the notes of the lyre wrapping Hades and Persephone together as if, perhaps, they are the only ones in the room. His singular focus as always been her, and the rest of the underworld fades to dullness beyond. He cannot hear the workers or the factories - just the song, thrumming between them and guiding their impromptu dance. 

 

He smiles. He is young again, sun in his face, Persephone curled against him beneath the shade of an elm. Birds chirp high above. The memory is forever etched into his mind.

 

This woman he loves with all his heart. And now that the crack in that wall between them has widened, he wants to rip the rest of it down. With his bare hands if he must. Stone by stone until there is nothing left between them. 

 

Spring will come again. They can weed out the garden they’ve left unattended between them, plant blossoms anew. It will take time, as all gardens do. For the first time since her arrival to the underground that winter, Hades sees Persephone smile. It’s just a ghost of one, a flicker, but it’s there as he holds her and they dance and the world above and below is at peace.

 

The lyre ends. 

 

Reality returns. 

 

The poet and the girl remain to be dealt with. He can see the plea in his wife’s eyes, can hear the Fates singing in the back of his old mind. A thousand voices at once all giving advice, opinions, words to the wise.

 

It is his fault. The girl - it had been the worst of the doubt, when he’d gone to her. Offered her a gilded cage. A songbird to sing in the mines. Doubt had nearly consumed every bit of him, just as doubt does. Even gods are not immune to it’s uneasy feeling.

 

It creeps in. 

 

But he must learn to trust Persephone. That she will be there on that platform when he comes to fetch her. That she will always return to him because of the promises made so long ago in a world that had been too bright, too warm. He can almost taste the nectar on his lips again. 

 

Doubt creeps in, but trust must win. 

 

Hades knows what he must do, and he hopes it will be enough to not lose the woman he loves. This powerful, beautiful woman - his  _ queen _ . There has never been another and there will never be another. 

 

He turns to the boy slowly, to the girl, and to Hermes who has been lingering throughout all of this. 

 

Hades knows what he must do, and can only hope it will be enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> and don't forget to those of you reading, you can also make requests or just come scream about hadestown/other fandoms with me over on ourladyoftheundcrground.tumblr.com. i'll be posting my fics there, as well as maybe some aesthetic edits or two. or several.


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